


Solemnity

by TheRomanDweller



Category: The Maze Runner (Movies), The Maze Runner Series - All Media Types, The Maze Runner Series - James Dashner, The Maze Runner The Scorch Trials, The Scorch Trials
Genre: AU, Clinical Depression, Death, Depression, Friendship, Loss, Loss of Trust, Modern, Modern AU, Multi, Newt Attempted Suicide, Suicide, Triggers, actual suicide, alternative universe, attempted suicide
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-06
Updated: 2016-06-06
Packaged: 2018-07-12 17:37:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7115743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheRomanDweller/pseuds/TheRomanDweller
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Newt confronts the death of a friend. Thomas is a teen volunteer at the medical hospital where Newt is recovering from. And they form an unlikely friendship.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Solemnity

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lokidiabolus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lokidiabolus/gifts).



> Edited To Conform To AO3 ToS

**Solemnity**

There is nothing that prepares you for the death of a friend. But Newt understood the very human desire to end one’s own life. He just couldn’t understand why his friend of more than 10 years would leave him. Leave him all alone in the fallout. The scene unfolds in Newt’s mind over and over again. So fresh and clear. Like it was yesterday. The events that transpired were the ultimate expression of self-destruction; the culmination of his friend’s death. Something being amiss in Newt is an understatement. On that faithful day, he has lost trust in friendship and has slowly understood the fragility of life and the extent of human frailty.

  
He clearly remembers the tragedy as if it was yesterday. The blood spatter on his young friend’s bedroom wall. Him clutching his friend’s body helplessly, as he himself trembled in fear and disbelief. Red, so much red… And the fervent denial Newt held on to until he heard the words “Code Blue” murmured by the Paramedics into their transceivers as they hauled Winston's body away.

The whole process of saving a life was so mechanical. So apathetic and so detached from passion that it almost looks like a scene from a movie thriller or a medical TV show. It was clockwork, the paramedics, the ambulance, the firefighters and the police came one way and then out the other. There was no consolation at the moment, only fear and panic. Another piece of the puzzle now unfit for the grand piece, another removal of a small cog from a grander, yet ever still larger machine. Any other description along the lines of the absence of life would have fit. But his friend's death did not fit a normal and peaceful Sunday afternoon  and what he hoped to expect in those few crucial moments between life and death had faded into innumerable fears

  
There is no dignity in death. And there is no dignity in  the death of a friend. Only insurmountable despair. It was a clear Sunday night. The air crisp and quiet, the mood and weather normative. Nothing abnormal and unexpected ever happens on these quiet Sunday nights. Well except of course, that then, Newt was covered in another man's blood, his hands, his shoes, and his white Ralph Lauren polo shirt.

Newt remembers it like it was yesterday, the sound of the gun going off. The sound of mortality. The spatter of red on the walls and on his shirt. The pieces of brain matter that ricocheted off the bedroom walls. The exit wound on Winston’s temples. And the bullet that lodged on the wall. The moment of crisis inexplicable and sudden.

It all happened so fast. The last word Newt ever uttered before his friend died was “Winston what are you…” Then BANG! The unexpected, macabre and harrowing sound. The gut wrenching slush of blood and brain matter. How the brain leaves the head in such a lurid and sickening way. The graphic scene absurd and unnatural. The thud of a soon-to-be dead body hitting the ground. And the helplessness Newt felt at the alarming moment. Fear washed over him like an avalanche and helplessness and panic followed. How Newt desperately clutched Winston’s dying body in his arms after he swooped in to prevent the body from hitting the floor fully. Newt screamed help at least a dozen times before Winston’s parents came in the room after hearing the loud gunshot and Newt’ gut-wrenching cries. Mr. and Ms. Churchill have lost a son that day.

Nothing out of the ordinary really happened with Newt and Winston in all the years they’ve known each other. Nothing had indicated that Winston was suffering from untreated clinical depression. Nothing gave it away. They were to go to university at UC Berkeley in the Fall of that year. It seemed that his friend got his shit together and for Newt, who didn’t know better, he’d say that Winston has got his life all figured out up until the moment he died. A realization that even closeness does not warrant transparency in friendship.

Newt now stares blankly out of the hospital window, coming back to reality from his recollection. His supportive and understanding father had him admitted to the Northridge Hospital’s psych ward immediately the day after Newt attended his high school graduation. Newt looks out of the window, but it's not to gaze and instead halt his thinking. He sits upright in a catatonic and paralytic state on his hospital bed. Newt hated the red tulips in the middle of the hospital’s courtyard. It reminded him so much of the blood soaked day he encountered and the things he lost. How he hated the its vibrant red color and the reminder that yes, his friend is now gone. He wished the grounds keepers and gardeners would change the red tulips into something else, Perhaps yellow tulips or white roses. Any flower that wasn’t red.He realizes that even the smallest things could bring him back into utter despair. 

  
A knock can be heard on his hospital door. A young brunet walks in carrying a guitar. Newt turns his attentions from peering on the outside towards the unexpected visitor. He looks at him then looses interest.

“Hey I’m a volunteer at the hospital. Do you care for a song? It’s alright if you don’t and I’ll just sod off and get out and not bother you, or I can come another time?,” was Thomas’s polite and kind proposition.

  
“No…stay. I’d like to hear it” was Newt’ weak response even when his body language showed disdain and disinterest.

So Thomas walks in the room, with a guitar in hand, heading towards the second vacant bed in the room across Newt and sits on it. He adjusts his guitar and holds it in position. He starts playing Black Lab’s “This Night”

_There are things I have done…There’s a place I have gone…There’s a beast-and I let it run, and it's running my way...,"_   were the first lines of the young man’s song.

Thomas plays his guitar, sings in a low melodic tune, surprisingly comforting for a young man such as himself, as he continues to sing, plucking away at his guitar, strumming while Newt keeps his gaze on the horizon, still looking out the window. Even with the good music, and the not-so-hard-to-look-at young man right in front of him his mind goes back over and over again to the traumatic event. He can still remember how the shocking sound of when the gun went off. Like the heralding gong of the god of death. Sickening, alarming, blunt. Signaling the claiming of another life. So lurid is the point where  life ends and death begins.

And when Thomas finishes playing his song and ends the chords on his guitar, he looks up to asses the patient and see if he liked it. But there is no sign or show of interest or gratitude, Newt simply intently stares at his guitar.

“Um…are you alright?” was Thomas’s concerned question to the young fair faced, blonde teen in front of him  
  
“He used to play the guitar…” is Newt's response, full of regret and sadness in his voice. The remark random and Thomas didn't really know what Newt was talking about.  
  
“Who?...” is Thomas’s curious question, or rather, a request for clarification. He knows he is prodding and prying into this young man’s business, but he couldn’t help it. There is something mysterious tinged with an unspoken sadness about the young blond. He wondered why a young man such as Newt, who looks physically healthy, is staying in the adult psychiatric ward of the Los Angeles' Scorch hospital. If Newt could describe his world to him it would be told as barren, cold and desolate. 

To answer Thomas' question of who Newt was talking about, he received a response of "A friend."

  
And with no consideration to Thomas' confusion, Newt simply began his tangent. “Do you know how we became friends? I'll tell you. He came up to me and said he liked sword fighting when we were in pre-school. He was waving a small wooden sword around and hit me right smack on the head on accident. I cried at first, but he gave me all his animal crackers for a week as his way of apologizing...” was Newt’s long winded, random and anecdotal confession to the young gruffly looking, but classically handsome guitarist across him.

He knows he shouldn't be sharing such nostalgic memories to a complete stranger. He should have just thanked the young volunteer and send him on his way.  Newt remembers the bitter-sweet memory fondly, but there is no smile on his face. All the great memories that made him happy now causes him great despondency, and still they are precious to him, foregoing ECT. Only consternation and pain and the lack of hope was shown by his body language and slumped shoulders. Perhaps he feels ashamed to not have seen the tell-tale signs of someone who was about to end their life. How could he not have seen it? Who was to blame? How could he have noticed?

  
“I take it he is your friend?” was Thomas’s misguided, ill-informed and oblivious response. He was just trying to make small talk and didn’t know that the man Newt is talking about was the reason why the blonde patient is in here.

Thomas was simply ignored politely. He could see that the patient is weak and somewhat catatonic.

Newt remembers, in silence, all the many times Winston has saved him from all the bullies at school. When they left grade school and reached middle school, Winston was slightly larger and more athletic than all the other kids in their school year, so whenever there was someone that tried to give the smaller, less agile Newt a hard time, his friend would always protect him. They didn’t care about the childish taunts concerning their close friendship. They were inseparable and would be constantly seen eating lunch together, playing and sitting under a tree reading an HP novel in comfortable silence. And this went on for many good years. 

“He was…” was Newt’s heart-breaking response. His voice lacked all joy and was weak beyond repair. It hurt Thomas to see such a young and beautiful patient, so torn, broken and damaged by the world.

Thomas takes a deep breath, looks down on the floor instead of facing the blonde patient and utters the only words he know appropriate for the situation, “I’m sorry...,” as his downcast eyes kept looking at the floor. 

  
“I’ve kept someone’s company for so long that I still expect him to turn up any second now. In no time at all. I wait for him to turn up any time soon... Spending time together for so long you forget that they’re gone. We've been friends for so long that you forget things like that. I'm still waiting for him to invite me over to his house and play some silly video games. I don't know. It's just weird that he's gone now.... Perhaps I may never find that kind of friendship again...” was Newt’ defeated and nihilistic response. No strings of word could explain his despair. No amount of time for grief could truly ever bring Newt back. All he had was this hospital and the recovery it promises. Even though Thomas just met Newt just now, he listened intently, politely and paid attention to the young patient in front of him.  
  
There was something beautiful and tragic about the way the young blonde talked. There was something distant and unbelievably sad that laced his voice. And it captivated and intrigued Thomas to no end, compelling him to stay a little longer and inexplicably drawn to the sadness in his tone.

 


End file.
